Steam Gaming: The Tenants

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Aywren

I’ve had my eye on The Tenants for a while, simply because it was a game published by Frozen District, who also published House Flipper. It also seemed like a game that would hit a lot of the right buttons for me. This turned out to be correct.

What is The Tenants?

From the Steam page:

Become a landlord and deal with problematic tenants as you build your rental property empire. Decide how to react to annoyed neighbors or police interventions. Will you design your apartment for a group of gamer friends or an aspiring musician looking for a new home?

This game delivers on its promises. You do, indeed, play a landlord who purchases properties, fixes them up, decorates them, and then finds tenants to rent them to. Different tenants are attracted to different styles of décor – think Animal Crossing – where furnishing can be modern, rustic, basic, or posh, for example.

Once you’ve got someone moved in, then it’s up to you to keep them happy and manage the bills. Both theirs and yours. Not every tenant is a dream renter, and there are ways to “encourage” them to up and move out if they’re more trouble than they’re worth.

The Tenants Overall

Overall, this game has a nice blend of a house renovation game (House Flipper) mixed with The Sims. While you don’t have to micro-manage your tenants, you do have to figure out who they are, what they like, and what kind of traits they have. You can work to befriend tenants by responding to their needs (repairing broken items or taking care of emergencies) and by gifting them items they like.

You can also take on side jobs that come in a few flavors – renovation, “babysitting” someone else’s naughty tenants and keeping them happy, and hosting Open Houses for other landlords - trying to find a renter to fit the property. These help to earn extra cash between your rentals, and from time to time, there are Elite Contracts that unlock sets of furnishings you can use on your own properties.

Some of the Elite Contracts do get a bit repetitive as you hit up the same locations several times. These change slightly, but the more you do them, the more you unlock, so it’s worth it.

I like the renovation jobs because they are pretty straightforward. You get a laundry list of exactly what the owner wants from the renovation, as well as a list of the styles of furnishings they like and don’t like. They’re usually quick to finish up – and if you need to hop over to save a tenant from a flooding bathroom, you have time to do that.

I was actually quite surprised to see how much content this game has - and I’ve only been working to level the first district so far. Apparently, you can unlock other districts and level them, as well. I’ve heard that you can get an agent to oversee a district for you, but I’m not sure how that works just yet.

Interestingly enough, Sims 4 will apparently be releasing a “For Rent” expansion later on this year (or so the leaks say). But after putting over 11 hours into The Tenants, I feel like Sims 4 has a lot to live up to if it means to compete as a rental game with something as fleshed out as this.

Every now and then, I have run across minor bugs while I’ve played. Nothing that exiting the game and relaunching it couldn’t fix, though.

Do I recommend this one?

If any of this sounds like fun to you, you’ll likely enjoy it. I give it a Yes!

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